'Disgraceful!' Trump Fires Back at ABC Reporter Who Accused Him of Lying About Downplaying the Virus

Nick Kangadis | September 11, 2020
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I'll give them credit. The radical media have a lot of hubris. They don't have much sense in terms of taking comments and actions in context, but what are you going to do? The radical media won't change unless their money pot dries up, so they'll continue to play their monotonous tunes in order to push the agenda given to them.

During a press conference at the White House on Thursday, President Donald Trump got in to a contentious exchange with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl in which Karl called the president a liar when asking about Trump's "downplaying" of the Chinese coronavirus.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. President," Karl said before totally be unbiased. "Why did you lie to the American people? And why should we trust what you have to say now?"

Trump answered by bringing up a very good point about audio released by "journalist" Bob Woodward in which Trump said, "I wanted to always play it down." If Woodward felt what he had the president saying was so vitally important, why didn't he report it sooner?

But I thought it would be interesting to talk to him [Woodward] for a period of, you know, calls. So we did that. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I don’t even know if the book is good or bad, but, certainly, if he thought that was a bad statement, he would have reported it because he thinks that — you know, you don’t want to have anybody that is going to suffer medically because of some fact. And he didn’t report it because he didn’t think it was bad. Nobody thought it was bad. 

Trump also wasn't particularly fond of the way Karl phrased his question.

"It’s a disgrace to ABC Television Network," Trump said. "It’s a disgrace to your employer."

That's when Karl doubled down on intimating that Trump is a liar.

"Are you saying you didn’t lie?" Karl asked.

"Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t," Trump responded.

The president had about enough of Karl's power move and shut it down by answering in a lengthy fashion.

Listen, what I went out and said is very simple: I want to show a level of confidence and I want a show strength as a leader, and I want to show that our country is going to be fine, one way or the other. Whether we lose one person — we shouldn’t lose any, because this shouldn’t have happened. This is China’s fault. This is nobody’s fault but China. China should not have allowed it to happen.

Whether you have a — one person, 180,000 people, or two and a half or 3 million people, which it could have been very seriously if we didn’t make the moves. And when you look at the opposition, where they said, “Oh, why did he put the ban on?” — Doctor Fauci said we saved hundreds of thousands of lives by putting the ban on China and then, ultimately, putting the ban on Europe. There was no lie here.

What we’re doing is we’re leading, and we’re leading in a proper way. And if, frankly, somebody else was leading it, they wouldn’t have closed it.

If you look at Nancy Pelosi, you look at Cuomo, you look at de Blasio, you look at Biden, months later, they said there’s no problem — they’re talking about me. Months later. And before any statement was made — you have to remember, I put the ban on China. So, obviously, outwardly I said it’s a very serious problem. And it’s always a serious problem. That doesn’t mean I’m going to jump up and down in the air and start saying, “People are going to die! People are going to die!” No. No. I’m not going to do that.

We’re going to get through this. And we’re, right now, I hope — really think we’re going to — we’re rounding the final turn. And a lot of good things are happening with vaccines and with therapeutics, but there’s no lying. And the way you ask that question is very disgraceful.

For the full exchange between Trump and Karl, watch the video at the top.

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